But these are the works of the Lord, who can recompense your Majesty by giving you many victories, and the fulfilment of your Majesty's desires, when He thinks the proper time arrived.

Meantime let Him be praised for all, and let your Majesty take great care of your health, which is the most important thing of all." Evidently the Lord did not think the proper time yet arrived for fulfilling his Majesty's desires for the subjugation of England, and meanwhile the King might find what comfort he could in pious commonplaces and in attention to his health.
But it is very certain that, of all the high parties concerned, Alexander Farnese was the least reprehensible for the over-throw of Philips hopes.
No man could have been more judicious--as it has been sufficiently made evident in the course of this narrative--in arranging all the details of the great enterprise, in pointing out all the obstacles, in providing for all emergencies.

No man could have been more minutely faithful to his master, more treacherous to all the world beside.

Energetic, inventive, patient, courageous; and stupendously false, he had covered Flanders with canals and bridges, had constructed flotillas, and equipped a splendid army, as thoroughly as he had puzzled Comptroller Croft.

And not only had that diplomatist and his wiser colleagues been hoodwinked, but Elizabeth and Burghley, and, for a moment, even Walsingham, were in the dark, while Henry III.